Here Are Some Of The Factors Affecting Customer Patronage In Your Fashion Brand And Solutions To Them

One of the factors that business owners use to determine the growth of a business is the amount of profit recorded at the end of a stipulated time frame or the impact of the company on its target customers.

“Without customers, there’s no company.” – Connie Elder

As a fashion business owner, whether or not your business thrives depends largely on your customer base. Even with a great level of creativity, stunning brand awareness, and other factors, if these factors don’t translate to increased customer patronage, then the business wouldn’t grow. Several factors contribute to this, and business owners need to take note of them.

In a survey we took with a different range of customers, we were able to highlight some of the factors and proffer solutions for them. Here are some of the factors that affect customer patronage, and what fashion brands can do to reduce it.

Marketing: How do you market your products as a brand owner? Do you rely on word-of-mouth marketing alone, and hope more customers would patronize you?

In this digital age, how a brand markets its products determines if the brand will be successful or not. And just like a customer told us, 

“Due to the strength of competition in the fashion industry now, a fashion brand needs to have good marketing skills.”

Apart from boosting sales, marketing is also another way for your brand to remain relevant, as well as serving as a communication channel to inform customers.

Basically, as a fashion business owner, you may not be getting customers simply because you don’t have a good marketing strategy. Click here to see how to employ social media for marketing, and here for creating brand awareness.

Quality: With so many fashion brands to choose from, customers have a range of options so quality matters a lot. Are your products of high quality or do you employ the use of low-quality materials or fabrics for your products?

In an industry where competition is high, it goes beyond just delivering a product to your customer to steadily gaining a reputation for surpassing a customer’s expectation consistently.

“By producing good quality outfits and accessories, fashion brands, especially in Nigeria will be able to increase their customer base.” – Nwaigwe Kelechi

Customer Relationship: According to Connie Elder, excellent customer service is the number one job in any company! It is the personality of the company and the main reason customers come back. 

So, how do you relate with your customers? Do you relate with them in such a way that they would patronize you in the future? To find out how to deliver premium customer service, click here.

Having a good relationship with your customers helps to give them a quality experience with your brand, and just as a client told us,

“Fashion brands can increase their customer base by giving customers their very best and by having a good customer-designer relationship.”

Pricing: This subject has become a touchy one for entrepreneurs, and we understand that the price of products is a function of the cost of the material, man-hours, and many more. 

But also considering the financial capacity of your target customers, just like a client told us, would go a long way. So, as fashion business owners, review your pricing strategy if you’re not getting enough customers. Who knows, that might just be the solution.

To read on how to properly price your products, click here.

Uniqueness: Even with the pool of competitors in the fashion industry, there’s something about Mai Atafo’s unique outfits. There’s equally something unique about the Okhtein products, so finding something that will make your business to be known for its products is essential.

Another reason you may not be getting enough customer patronage is that your brand is not unique. The uniqueness of a brand is what sets a brand apart from competitors and gives it a commercial edge in the marketplace.

According to Gladys Ibrahim, because Nigeria is rich in culture, Nigerian brands can stand out by integrating different aspects of our culture into their styles, hence giving each piece a unique story.

Those are some of the factors and solutions to why customers stop patronizing a brand.